I Guess ICP Were Right About Miracles Afterall…

June 21, 2010

Since I’m a total geek who would rather spend my latest paycheck on music than food, I bought myself a turntable this past weekend. Finally, I joined the rest of the hipster elite who haven’t moved to cassette tapes yet. Though only having a total of four records at the start, I was excited nonetheless.

Williamsburg Dreamin...

I set up my new piece of equipment and went to put the turntable’s box away somewhere safe. Despite living in my apartment for about a year now, there are certain areas of it I’ve barely looked in. I chose to store the box in one such place…a closet directly behind my living room sofa which I assume contained nothing but extra futons. After completing the Herculean task of moving my couch forward a few inches, I lifted up one especially heavy futon to make room. That’s when I noticed a weird stack of…something…previously obscured by the extra bedding. Upon closer inspection, I realized these were old records crammed into the closet. A lot of old records.

This is only half of them

I’m not one to believe in stuff like destiny and cliche concepts better suited for an Oxygen Channel original presentation, but this straight up blew my mind. Eight hours after buying a turntable, I stumble across a cache of old LPs I somehow didn’t notice over the past 11 months of my life. Even more weird, of three potential apartments free in town last July I ended up in the one previously owned by someone who enjoyed music to the point of hoarding upwards of 70 albums in his closet. And nobody thought to clean them out/sell them after he moved…I’m not the first ALT to occupy this place and the majority of these albums hail from the 70s/80s, so the fact they lasted this long is amazing.

The actual contents of the LP stack, you ask? A lot of Japanese artists, and a lot of Status Quo. Here are a few other highlights.

First Edition Japanese Printing aka eBay gold!

Peak irony right here

KITTY

Coming across all this music also made me feel justified in buying the turntable in the first place, and not just because I chanced across a small library of music to actually play on it. Finding actual, physical records was an absolute thrill, the type of rush you don’t get with MP3s (“oh boy I downloaded ‘California Gurls’ whooooooo”). It’s terribly outdated and goes against my beliefs…I think people who say news “is just better in paper” are so backwards they could double as Tom Green…but I’m such a sucker for LPs and CDs despite the fact I can…cough…acquire music digitally at…cough…much cheaper prices.

Part of it’s precaution…any second my computer or external hard drive could blow up and take months worth of music away from me permanently. More than that…and here things get REALLY NERDY…a collection of music like the stack I found helps one show who they are. Defining yourself through buying stuff probably isn’t very honorable (“look at my collection of anime figures!!!”) but being passionate about art – whether it be music, painting, literature, so forth…is telling. This stack of records reveals a little bit about the person who owned them…that he liked rock, REALLY liked Cheap Trick and also somehow flew into the future and obtained a DJ Z-Trip single (?). Most importantly, though, it reveals one thing they were passionate about. Which could be transmitted through iTunes…or a Kindle, or a folder labeled “great art” on your desktop…but that seems so…I don’t know. Arm your virtual tomatoes now…I think part of it is anyone could download something. Nothing wrong with it, I do it all the time…but someone seeking out an actual physical copy of a piece of art speaks way more volumes, mostly that this person is kinda crazy. But hey, you gotta be a little crazy to be passionate about something.

Even Status Quo.

(Japanese Fun Fact #68 – Let’s talk about the World Cup a little more! Specifically, how awesome the Japanese announcers have been thus far. I have no idea how broadcasters in America or anywhere else in the world approach it, but the dudes they’ve got calling these games straight up root for teams, and it’s pretty cool. I’m usually put off by over-the-top homerism…words fail to describe how detestable the Chicago White Sox’s “Score one for the good guys!” announcers come off…but it works at an international event like the World Cup. Why shouldn’t someone root for their home nation as long as it isn’t in a way-too-nationalistic way? During Japan’s win over Cameroon, the guys calling the action went bananas when they scored the game-winning goal, one of them belting out “YOSH!” the Japanese equivalent of “sweet!” I think. It was an awesome moment. Even better, they aren’t afraid to pull for other teams, mostly any underdog not named “North Korea.” They sounded ecstatic during New Zealand’s upset draw with Italy, happy to see one of the bigger longshots forcing a tie with the defending champs. They seem a little less uptight about it than American broadcasters…and rule because of it.)